World

Australian Documents Life 'Inside the Strangest Nation on Earth'

A propaganda painting showing Kim Il Sung, the first leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,his wife, Kim Jong Suk and and baby Kim Jong-Il, who would later succeed his father as Supreme Leader.

North Korea is perhaps the most sealed-off country in the world. The regime of Kim Jong-un has tight control over what information Koreans consume — there's virtually no access to the Internet or foreign media — and its propaganda machine broadcasts a distorted version of reality.

But an Australian traveler has lifted the curtain on North Korea's propaganda machine, surreptitiously documenting the country's strange everyday life, which is shaped by the regime's indoctrination efforts.

Mark Fahey, 54, a biomedical engineer living in Sydney, has visited North Korea six times over the past four years. Each time, Fahey smuggled recording devices in and out of the country to capture hundreds of hours of radio and TV broadcasts, and tens of thousands of pictures, using social engineering techniques to go where he was not supposed to, and see things he wasn't meant to see.

The result of this unprecedented project is a multimedia e-book containing audio, video, photographs and even interactive annotated panorama views of Pyongyang. The book is called Behind the Curtain, and Fahey plans to release it as a free download at the end of the year for everyone. (Initially it will be available as an iBook but Fahey says he wants to publish it for Android devices as well.)

A screenshot of Behind the Curtain.

Image: Mark Fahey

The goal of the project is to give people outside of North Korea a chance to peek inside "the strangest nation on earth," as Fahey puts it. And to document the country's propaganda-based mass media, which Fahey felt had never been really well-documented.

"You can read a lot about the political situation, you can read a lot about human rights, but I couldn't find anything to read about popular culture or about mass media," Fahey tells Mashable. "Because it was unavailable, I just thought: I want to document it, collect it, and put it in the public domain."

To collect the "terabytes and terabytes and terabytes" of material, Fahey needed to overcome two main hurdles:

First, tourists have certain restrictions on what devices they can bring into the country.

Secondly, he had to gain the trust of the government-appointed tourist guides, also known as "minders," who lead tourists everywhere they go and control what parts of the country they get to see. (No tourists can roam North Korea without a minder.)

To smuggle in the devices he needed, he made them look like normal consumer items. He disguised his USB radio and TV receivers as regular USB drives, putting them into sealed plastic bags so they would look like he just bought them at the airport's duty free shop. He turned his old Fuji photo-camera into a radio and brought a MP3 player that could also record and receive AM and FM radio signals.

Some of the gear Mark Fahey smuggled inside of North Korea.

Image: Mark Fahey

Fahey's contraption: a coathanger used as a radio antenna.

Image: Mark Fahey

During his last few trips, he was allowed to bring in his iPhone, so he used it as a GPS receiver to track everywhere he was going and then pinpoint the locations of everything he was taking pictures of. Some of those pictures he took with permission, others without, covertly taking shots with his camera hanging from his side.

Other material, like the surreal video below, he simply bought at North Korean gift shops. The video here shows the North Korean pop music band Moranbong Band playing the song "Without a Break" during their 2013 New Year's Eve performance. In the background, a screen shows a missile launch, and the crowd cheers after it destroys the world.

To get past the minders' watchful surveillance, Fahey simply played the role of the "useful idiot," as he puts it.

"If they just think you're a goofy tourist and you act that way they're not going to watch you," he says.

He built a friendly relationship with them and pretended to be in constant admiration of the country, "regurgitating" their propaganda back at them, Fahey explains. The minders allowed him bathroom breaks by himself at a school, for example, and he pretended to get lost to visit floors that are normally off-limits for tourists.

A propaganda mural in a high school floor, normally not accessible to tourists, that encourages students to study hard so they can have a chance to kill the enemies: the Americans and Japanese.

Image: Mark Fahey

On occasion, he snuck out at night when he wasn't being watched.

During a presentation at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference (HOPE) in New York on Sunday, he explained that the minders encourage you to drink so that you will go to sleep early. "Don't get drunk because all the fun starts at night," he said.

The origins of the project go back to when Fahey was a child during the Cold War and his aunt gave him a short wave radio. With it, Fahey started listening to radio broadcasts from Moscow and Beijing. The propaganda eventually became an obsession. And as these stations encouraged foreign listeners to send in letters to find out more about life under communist rule, Fahey wrote and received several packages of propaganda material in return.

Mark Fahey and a soldier at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (commonly known as the DMZ), a buffer zone between North and South Korea.

As an adult, he began thinking about visiting North Korea. During a research period, he watched North Korean television and listened to the country's radio from Australia, thanks to satellite dishes installed in his backyard. Each trip took about six months of preparation, he said. And sifting through the material he collected on his return was time consuming.

Fahey is currently at work on his next project: documenting propaganda in Eritrea, the world's worst country in terms of press freedoms, just above North Korea, according to Reporters Withour Borders.

north-korea-behind-the-curtain

A recording of the almost hypnotic music that plays throughout Pyongyang everyday, except Sunday, at 6 a.m.

Fahey says he was never able to figure out what it was. When he asked his minder, the minder replied: "What music? What are you talking about?"

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